The Founding Act
The Founding Act - 21 June 1964 Jacques Lacan
See article in original language - Acte de fondation - 21 juin 1964 - French
I hereby found -as alone as I have always been in my relation to the psychoanalytic causethe French School of Psychoanalysis, whose direction I will personally assume for the
next four years, which nothing currently prohibits me from answering for. I intend this
title to represent the organism in which there is work to be accomplished-work which in
the field Freud has opened restores the cutting edge of its truth; which brings the original
praxis that he instituted under the name of psychoanalysis back to the duty that in our
world is incumbent upon it; which, through a sustained critique, denounces the
deviations and compromises that encumber its progress while degrading its use. This
objective of our work is inseparable from the training to be dispensed within this
movement of reconquest. That is, those that I have trained myself are admitted as fully
qualified, just as anyone who can contribute to demonstrating that the experience of this
training is well-grounded is invited to join. Those who enter this School will undertake to
fulfil a task that is subject to both internal and external supervision. In exchange they are
assured that nothing will be spared in order that anything valuable they do gets the
attention it deserves and in the appropriate place. To carry out this work we shall adopt
the principle of sustained elaboration in small groups. Each group (we have a name to
designate them) will be composed of at least three people, five at most, four is the right
balance. PLUS ONE responsible for the selection, the discussion and the outcome to be
accorded to the work of each. After a certain period of functioning the elements of the
group will find themselves invited to permutate into another group. The position of
responsibility will not constitute a hierarchy for which service rendered might be
capitalized into access to a higher grade, and no one will have to regard himself as
demoted for entering into the rank of work at the base. For the reason that every
personal endeavour will place its author under conditions of critique and supervision to
which all work undertaken will be submitted in the School. This in no way implies an
inverted hierarchy but a circular organization whose functioning-which will be easy to
program-will firm up with experience. We will form three sections whose progress I will
assure along with two collaborators who will second me in each.
1. Section for pure psychoanalysis, or praxis and doctrine of psychoanalysis properly
speaking, which is and is nothing but-this will be established in its time and place-training
analysis. The urgent problems to be raised concerning all issues of training analysis will
find a way forward here through a sustained confrontation between persons who have
the experience of training and candidates in training. Its raison d’être is based on what
there is no reason to conceal: namely, the need resulting from professional requirements
whenever they lead the analysand in training to adopt responsibility that is analytic to any
degree. It is in the context of that problem and as a special case that entering into
supervision is to be situated. This is a prelude to defining this case on criteria other than
the impressions of all and the prejudices of each. For it is known that such is its only law
currently, when violations of the rule implicit in the observance of its forms are rife.
From the outset and in each case qualified supervision will be assured within this
framework for the training analyst in our School. The characteristics whereby I myself
break with the stated standards of training practice will be proposed for study, as will the
The Founding Act - 21 June 1964 Jacques Lacan
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effects imputed to my teaching on the course of my analyses when it is the case that my
analysands attend in the capacity of students. Included therein, if necessary, will be the
only impasses to be retained from my position in such a School, namely, the impasses
that the induction my teaching aims at providing would engender in its work. These
studies, the point of which is to call into question the established routine, will be
gathered and compared by the directorate of this Section, which will oversee the best
ways to maintain the effects of their solicitation.
Three sub-sections: - Doctrine of pure psychoanalysis - Internal critique of its praxis as
training - Supervision of analysts in training.
Finally, I posit that this section, Section 1, and also the section whose destination I will
indicate in part 3, will not limits its recruitment to medical qualifications, pure
psychoanalysis not being in itself a therapeutic technique.
2. Section of applied psychoanalysis, which means of therapeutics and clinical medicine
Medical groups will be admitted to this section, whether composed of psychoanalyzed
subjects or not, provided they are capable of contributing to the psychoanalytic
experience; through the critique of its indications and its results; by testing the categorical
terms and structures that I have introduced as maintaining the course of Freudian praxisand this in clinical examinations, in nosographical definitions and in the very positing of
therapeutic projects.
Here, again, there are three subsections: - The doctrine of treatment and its variations Casuistry - Psychiatric information and medical explorations
A directorate that will authenticate each study as being from the School, and composed
in such a way as to exclude all preconceived conformism.
3. Section for taking stock of the Freudian Field This section will first take responsibility
for reporting on and critically assessing everything that is offered by publications in this
field in which they claim to be authorized. It will undertake to bring up to date the
principles from which analytic praxis must receive its status within science. A status
which, however particular it has to be recognized as having, cannot be that of an
ineffable experience. Finally, this section will call upon what, concerning structuralism
installed in particular sciences, can throw light on the one whose function I have
demonstrated in our own to inform and also to communicate our experience-and in the
opposite sense, what, concerning our own subjectivation, these sciences can receive as
complementary inspiration. Ultimately, a praxis of the theory is required, in the absence
of which the order of affinities delineated by the sciences we call conjectural will remain
at the mercy of this political drift which inflates itself by means of the illusion of
universal conditioning.
Thus, three more subsections - Ongoing commentary on the psychoanalytic movement Articulation with related sciences - Ethics of psychoanalysis, which is the praxis of its
theory.
The financial resources initially comprised of the contributions by School’s members via
the subscriptions it will ultimately obtain, indeed the services it will provide as a School,
will be entirely reserved for its publishing efforts. In the first instance a yearbook will
publish the titles and abstracts of works of the School, wherever they have been
The Founding Act - 21 June 1964 Jacques Lacan
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published-a yearbook in which will appear, at their request, anyone who has fulfilled a
function in the School. One subscribes to the School by presenting oneself in a work
group constituted in the manner described above. Admission initially will be decided by
me without taking into account any positions taken by anyone in the past towards me
personally, sure as I am that, concerning those who have left me, it is not I who has it in
for them but they who have it in for me all the more because they are unable to return.
My response to the rest will only concern what I can presume or observe on the basis of
the group’s value and the place it initially intends to fulfil. The School’s organization on
the principle of rotation that I have indicated will be determined by the efforts of a
committee approved by an initial general meeting to be held in a year’s time. This
committee will develop it on the basis of the experience over a second year, when a
second general meeting will be asked to approve it. There is no necessity for members to
implement the entirety of this plan for it to work. I don’t need a long list, just dedicated
workers, such as those I already know.